Sarah Portella (Edison) GMOs As A Social Problem

In recent years the agricultural community has seen a vast amount of advances made in both technology and technique. The most controversial of these being the use of “genetically modified organism” in food and staple crops. Though the idea of genetically modifying crops is to produce more pest resistant, more disease resistant, more travel hardy crops, along with other alleged improvements, there are a few issues that need to be addressed. The safety and ethics of this practice and the integrity of its marketers and their intentions will be examined here. 

As GMOs are a somewhat new technology there is not much known about the long term effects it may have on human health. Many professionals are even attempting to connect the rising rate of food allergies to the use of genetically modified ingredients, specifically soy allergies. . Corporations like Monsanto have tried to enrich some of the staple grains to be more nutritious to its consumer. Of course, consumers are not informed that the only reason the grains have to be enriched to begin with is due to over processing for the sake of speedier and more convenient production. Consumers are also not informed of the fact that synthetic vitamins added to the foods are not absorbed nearly half as well by the human body, therefore still leaving buyers with a lack of truly nutritious food and leaving room for all sorts of deficiencies (Perl, P. 95).

If the concern for a balanced diet were not enough, than the industry’s lack of knowledge regarding their products’ effects on a delicate ecosystem and an already taxed environment. Many theorists have proposed that by modifying crops to be resistant to pests and disease we run the risk of producing a super resistant strain of these organisms, creating an even larger problem than the one at hand (as has occured with the overuse of penicillin and new resistant bacteria). Not to mention the issue of balancing the now hungry pests and their need to feed. None of these areas have been assessed but genetically modified crops are still being grown all over the world. 

Further, due to patents claimed by large corporations like Monsanto, local farmers everywhere are losing their crops and even their entire farms. If a GMO crop is planted within a range of about ten miles near another open pollinated crop, that other crop is doomed to now contain some of these modified genes. Now that these plants contain a part of the patented genes, they can be repossessed by the corporation under the patents. But this legal theft is certainly not the only way corporations are stealing from the local food supply. By producing crops in larger quantity, and with support from wealthy companies are able to keep technology in the “state of the art” making it less expensive to buy crops shipped half way across the country and leaving the competition without a chance to stay in the market. 

Not only has the industry’s methods and products come into question but even it’s reliability is certainly shaky. As of 2002, the state of Oregon began requiring companies to label foods containing even 0.1% of “GE” (Genetically Engineered) foods. The corporations providing these modified crops fought long and hard against public policy makers but have ultimately lost. Oregon is one of the only states in the battle for labeling requirements. (Raab and Grobe, P. 1) By fighting consumers on the right to know what’s in their food doesn’t that indicate something about the GMO industry and it’s concern for the consumer? Doesn’t it raise any questions about how sure they are about it’s safety? If a product is perfectly safe why not label it with all it’s ingredients and their methods of production and processing out of courtesy to the concerned consumer? 

This is not the only area of suspicion concerning the company’s honesty and reliability as a whole. Apparently in it’s launch of the famous Golden Rice, there was little information given on the actual effectiveness and availability the product had on it’s supposed target consumer, the third world country. The rice was designed to enhance beta-carotene and promote the production of Vitamin A, a deficiency of which is often the cause of blindness due to malnutrition. But under closer scrutiny this philanthropic publicity stunt simply doesn’t make the cut. 

Consider the diet in a third world country, due to lack of economic stability food supplies are limited and diets are boiled down to a few staples. This lack of a varied diet prevents the people in third world countries from absorbing this “miracle vitamin” due to the absence of Vitamin D, which is a result of a limited diet. As Alex Kirby stated in his article at BBC, “poorly-fed people are unlikely to be able to absorb beta-carotene even when they eat golden rice. To use it, they need a diverse diet, including green leafy vegetables” (P. 1) An writer for The Lancet, a British medical journal, cited in the same article, went further to say “seeking a technological food fix for world hunger may be… the most commercially malevolent wild goose chase of the new century”. Vandana Shiva in her article “The ‘Golden Rice’ Hoax: When Public Relations Replaces Science” took the stunt still further in stating that the “miracle rice” could even aggravate the current issue with Vitamin A deficiency. By narrowing third world diets to the enriched rice they lack another important factor in nutrient absorption, fat. Rice is not by a long shot a significant source of this essential factor in the human diet (P. 1).

Aside from the irresponsibility of tampering with genes with unpredictable results, disregarding the effects on the consumer and the environment, putting small farmers out of business, denying a consumer’s right to know what they’re consuming, and making a show of third world poverty, there is still more to be said about our friends in the GMO industry. As if all these reasons were enough to stop the production of GMOs, it seems that the larger picture has become impossible to see with all the red flags that these companies throw up. By patenting the planting process, and dominating small farms accidentally polluted with GE genes, and buying up more and more farming land, the GMO industry is completely centralizing the food supply. Soon the day will come, that due to the large number of GMO farms and their spreading plague not a single non modified farm will remain. This will leave consumers all over the world at the mercy of large corporations and their extreme profit margins. With the argument being made against the industry’s integrity, do we really want people like this running the entire food supply? 

I chose the topic of Genetically Modified Food as a social problem due to the fact that it affects every person who consumes food, in other words everyone on the planet. Whether it be directly in your fresh produce, indirectly in the modified crops they feed livestock, or in the modified corn that is used in the infamous “high fructose corn syrup” that is an ingredients in most processed foods. Read your labels ladies and gentleman. 

• Kirby, Alex. “‘Mirage’ of GM’s golden promise” . BBC News Online. February, 2004.

             http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3122923.stm

• Perl, Lila.  “Health Food Facts and Fancies” .“Junk Food, Fast Food, Health Food”.1980
• Shiva, Vandana. “The ‘Golden Rice’ Hoax: When Public Relations replaces Science”. 

             http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/goldenricehoax.html

•  Organic Consumers Association. “Genetically Engineered Food May Be Cause Rising Allergies”.

              http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5296.cfm

• AgbioForum. 

             http://www.agbioforum.missouri.edu/v6n4/v6n4a02-raab.pdf 

This entry was posted on 21. April 2009 at 23:26 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.